Q. How do I build this mini pond?

I’d like to add a wa­ter fea­ture of some kind to my tiny back gar­den, but I don’t have space for a pond.

I came across a large rigid tub at a gar­den cen­tre re­cently and I won­dered whether this would be suit­able for us­ing as a wa­ter fea­ture. If so, please could you give me some ad­vice on how best to set this up as a mini pond— and is there a way to dis­guise the black plas­tic edges, please?

I want to add a few plants, but due to the size of the tub, there won’t be any fish in this pond. KATIE LEWIS, EMAIL

AThis kind of project is very sim­ple to do, doesn’t take up a lot of space and can look re­ally ef­fec­tive.

There are sev­eral ways you can go about do­ing this, but here’s how Melissa Mab­bitt of Mod­ern Gar­dens mag­a­zine, did some­thing sim­i­lar in her own gar­den.

7 The com­pleted pond — we’ve po­si­tioned this one in a bor­der.

5 Cover the sur­face with gravel to stop the com­post float­ing free. Place the bas­kets on bricks to achieve the cor­rect lev­els for the mar­ginal plants.

3 Build up the sides us­ing bricks or stone. We used lime­stone for a dry wall ef­fect, with dabs of mor­tar to firm the shell. Try to hide the edges of the con­tainer.

1 Make a bed of sand at least 5cm/2in thick and rake it level. Check that it’s per­fectly hor­i­zon­tal us­ing a spirit level, or it will be ob­vi­ous once it’s filled with wa­ter.